I'll give my two cents. I personally find anim8or to be a great tool. Comparing Anim8or and Blender is like comparing a pen and paper with a scientific calculator. Anim8or is simple and easy to use, just like the pen. pen and paper are usefull for many things, but you can't do calculations as quickly as the calculator. Each has thier own advantages; I wouldn't use a scientific calculator to add 2+2, I would use my head. However, I wouldn't want to calculate any country's national spending record with pen and paper, I could, but it would take forever.

And just like a scientific calculator, if you understand complex math, those calculators come fairly natural. It doesn't take long to get a math scholar to use one.

I got Blender a little more than a week ago, and already I can pump out helicopter models in 1/2 a day. Did I learn Blender? No. Have I learned Anim8or? No. Have I learned how to make an effective model? Yes. If you understand the concepts behind 3D animation, then doing them in another program is easy. You may learn every button on a scientific calculator, but if you don't know algebra, you will never be able to use the calculator. Don't study your calculator, study math. Then you will be able to do all the functions of that grand scientific calculator, on a piece of paper. Don't study Blender, Maya, 3DSMax, or Anim8or. Study animation. Then you can be great no matter what program you use.

lol, it's like you guys don't want me to expand my knowledge of 3D animating software & stay on Anim8or. Well anyways I got a new laptop which is awesome. It's a lot better than my crappy commercialized PC that can't even run Portal without being all slow even when the graphics are on low. I just recently bought the Orange Box Half Life 2 ftw!

Recently I,ve been using Blender 3d and I'm pretty good at it but I'm never leaving Anim8or. If I'm making a simple animated short I'll be using Anim8or but if I'm making an over-complicated animated short I'll use Blender.

Retro, I know it is important to hear others opinions, but why don't you give it a try and find out for your self, (I'm talking about Blender) perhaps it will win your hart, as complex as it is I like the challenge of it, once you see how powerfull it is and the things you can do you'll probably fall in love with it, for me I use it more for special effects than modelling, I like to create movie intros for my family videos and it's awesome. and there's so many resourses that can help you learn it one step at time.

If you're going to take the Blender plunge, then I HIGHLY recommend getting some books. The Essential Blender, Blender for Dummies, that sort of thing. Blender's not the kind of thing you're probably going to gain much with if you just try to sit down and mess with it. Learning the Keyboard Shortcuts alone is huge.

Once I got my feet wet with Blender, I found myself use a combination of both for any given project. I'd say it was something like 90% an8 and 10% Blender, but that 10% usually was things you could do in five miuntes in Blender that would take three hours in an8.

There's just something special about Anim8or. I can't leave it.It's close to my heart

to be honest I've learned to like Carrara a lot even though I haven't done much with it, and I never really used messiah3d (even though it has an extremely powerful renderer). For some reason pretty much all of my 3d work has been done with anim8or. I even have the modeling and posing software made for Carrara

I guess it just goes to show simplicity done right can be a lot better than their counterparts.